Population Growth "Alarmism" as a Deep Political Control Device

[Gary Severson]

GREG SAYS, The "transparency" of C02 has nothing at all to do with this, Gary. There is a gas called, Dimethylsulfide (or DMS for short). This gas is responsible for well over 90% of the release of oceanic sulphuric gas, and accounts for a significant amount of cloud formation because it oxidizes (in the atmosphere) resulting in sulfate aerosols, which in turn seed cloud condensation. Its relationship to increased C02 is a subject you would perhaps do well to study.


Gary says,
Is the CLAW hypothesis dead?

The CLAW hypothesis takes its name from Charlson, Lovelock, Andreae and Warren, whose 1987 paper suggested that phytoplankton could help regulate Earth's climate. Phytoplankton single-celled algae emit a gas called dimethylsulphide (DMS) and the authors suggested that DMS forms tiny new particles (or aerosol) in the atmosphere which controls climate by affecting the amount of sunlight reflected by clouds. New aerosol particles from DMS have the potential to increase cloud reflectivity because they are effective cloud condensation nuclei and can increase the number of cloud drops.
However, new results from GLOMAP suggest that CLAW may be very weak.
The key aerosol quantity is the number concentration of cloud condensation nuclei (CCN), but until recently global models did not include the necessary aerosol physics to quantify CCN. We used GLOMAP to calculate the sensitivity of CCN to changes in DMS emission using multiple present-day and future sea-surface DMS climatologies.
The DMS flux from a future globally warmed climatology was 0.2 Tg (sulphur) per year higher than present day. The largest CCN response to this extra DMS was seen in the Southern Ocean, contributing to a Southern Hemisphere mean annual increase of less than 0.2%.
We show that the changes in DMS flux and CCN concentration between the present day and global warming scenario are similar to interannual differences due to variability in windspeed. So although DMS makes a significant contribution to global marine CCN concentrations, the sensitivity of CCN to potential future changes in DMS flux is very low. This finding, together with the predicted small changes in future seawater DMS concentrations, suggests that the role of DMS in climate regulation is very weak.

[Gary Severson]

Ken Carslaw @ GLOMAP should be the source credited in previous post called is "Claw Hypothesis Dead"?

[Mark Stapleton]

You have no dog in this fight yourself? Really? Then what are you doing in this fight?

Unlike you I don't benefit financially from population growth.

Unlike you I see my living standards diminished by overpopulation.

I think its a stupid race to the bottom.

[Greg Burnham]

[excerpt]

Does the world produce enough food to feed everyone?

The world produces enough food to feed everyone. World agriculture produces 17 percent more calories per person today than it did 30 years ago, despite a 70 percent population increase. This is enough to provide everyone in the world with at least 2,720 kilocalories (kcal) per person per day (FAO 2002, p.9). The principal problem is that many people in the world do not have sufficient land to grow, or income to purchase, enough food.

What are the causes of hunger?

What are the causes of hunger is a fundamental question, with varied answers.

Poverty is the principal cause of hunger. The causes of poverty include poor people's lack of resources, an extremely unequal income distribution in the world and within specific countries, conflict, and hunger itself. As of 2008 (2005 statistics), the World Bank has estimated that there were an estimated 1,345 million poor people in developing countries who live on $1.25 a day or less.3 This compares to the later FAO estimate of 1.02 billion undernourished people. Extreme poverty remains an alarming problem in the world's developing regions, despite some progress that reduced "dollar--now $1.25-- a day" poverty from (an estimated) 1900 million people in 1981, a reduction of 29 percent over the period. Progress in poverty reduction has been concentrated in Asia, and especially, East Asia, with the major improvement occurring in China. In Sub-Saharan Africa, the number of people in extreme poverty has increased. The statement that 'poverty is the principal cause of hunger' is, though correct, unsatisfying. Why then are (so many) people poor? The next section summarizes Hunger Notes answer.

Harmful economic systems are the principal cause of poverty and hunger. Hunger Notes believes that the principal underlying cause of poverty and hunger is the ordinary operation of the economic and political systems in the world. Essentially control over resources and income is based on military, political and economic power that typically ends up in the hands of a minority, who live well, while those at the bottom barely survive, if they do. We have described the operation of this system in more detail in our special section on Harmful economic systems.

Conflict as a cause of hunger and poverty. At the end of 2005, the global number of refugees was at its lowest level in almost a quarter of a century. Despite some large-scale repatriation movements, the last three years have witnessed a significant increase in refugee numbers, due primarily to the violence taking place in Iraq and Somalia. By the end of 2008, the total number of refugees under UNHCR's mandate exceeded 10 million. The number of conflict-induced internally displaced persons (IDPs) reached some 26 million worldwide at the end of the year . Providing exact figures on the number of stateless people is extremely difficult But, important, (relatively) visible though it is, and anguishing for those involved conflict is less important as poverty (and its causes) as a cause of hunger. (Using the statistics above 1.02 billion people suffer from chronic hunger while 36 million people are displaced [UNHCR 2008])

Hunger is also a cause of poverty, and thus of hunger. By causing poor health, low levels of energy, and even mental impairment, hunger can lead to even greater poverty by reducing people's ability to work and learn, thus leading to even greater hunger. [end]

The author goes on to mention that global warming and/or climate change is feared as another potential obstacle to overcoming world hunger. However, it is clear that there is currently enough to go around.

[Greg Burnham]

[Gary Severson]

The trouble is more people than not believe his attempt at humor is the case.

[Charles Drago]

I love Kinison, and I'd like to think he'd offer the following advice to us:

"I've been listening to you bemoaning the end of America and the emergence of a Fascist state here. And I share your pain and fear. But I've been in America for decades, and it's always been like this in my lifetime, and you keep raising your fists and doing your research, and it never changes. But I know how to save you.

"MOVE WHERE THE DEMOCRACY IS!

"C'mere, c'mere ... look around you ... you know what this is, all the illegal wars and unelected presidents and corporate crimes and coup d'etats ... the end of culture and the rise of theocracy ... IT'S THE END OF AMERICA, THE END OF DEMOCRACY, FOR THE LOVE OF GOD MOVE WHERE THE DEMOCRACY IS!"

[Greg Burnham]

Me too, Charles. I love Kinison. That his is an overly simplistic solution is what makes it appealing.

I'm grateful that most people haven't the ability to appreciate simplicity for the following reason: If they did San Diego would suffer severe over-population! I moved back to San Diego in 1989 almost immediately after I realized that it has, literally, the best climate in the world. I just packed up and went.

San Diego's Average Temperatures (Highs on top--Lows on bottom)
Jan Feb Mar Apr May Jun Jul Aug Sep Oct Nov Dec
65° 66° 66° 68° 68° 71° 76° 77° 77° 74° 68° 66°
48° 50° 52° 55° 58° 61° 65° 67° 65° 60° 54° 48°
1.8" 1.5" 1.8" 0.8" 0.3" 0.1" - - - - 1.5" 1.6" (Rain fall)

It's not the best kept secret in the world. It just feels like it is.

[Gary Severson]

I like Kinison too. Yeh, one can move to where there is democracy if you want to leave families behind. As far as San Diego goes, yes it is a beautiful place, but as a native of SD said to me once, none of this beauty would be here without irrigation. As you describe Greg, less than 9" of rain per yr. basically means a desert. I prefer 35-40" per yr. You need 35" for a forest. I have 1000 lakes within 50 mi. of my house in Mpls.& 15,000 within 300 mi. & hundreds of thousands just over the Canadian border. There are 7mths., April thru Oct., of very pleasant weather & 5 mths. of hard water. I know people that move here from NYC because of the weather. They say it is a dry cold compared to the cold wet sea level temps. in NYC winters. That's why there are 3 mill. people in the Mpls./Bloomington/St.Paul metro. It is, relatively speaking, the 2nd largest (Kansas City 1st) metro (2500) sq. mi. wise. This is because there are no mountains or oceans to stop sprawl. So most houses are on large lots in comparison to most cities and therefore it spreads the city out. Real estate is huge here as a result. You need to get into ice fishing Greg.

[Ed Jewett]

Wondering aloud where David Guyatt is (hoping he is healthy and thriving in his retirement), as I recall reading some of his work years ago on state-sponsored weather modification, now probably a full-blown multi-state enterprise harnessing science, airplanes, antennae, space weapons, and more. In that light:


Notorious El Nino Doubles Civil Wars, Scientists Say

http://newyork.ibtimes.com/articles/2033...rigger.htm

August 24, 2011 3:18 PM EDT

The El Nino climate cycle brings not only high temperatures and dry weather, but also more chances of civil wars, a new study claims.

Between 1950 and 2004, the risk of civil wars doubled in 90 tropical countries when hit by El Nino, is the warm phase of the El Niño-Southern Oscillation, or ENSO, a periodic warming and cooling of the tropical Pacific Ocean.

While its partner La Nina is a cool, rainy period, El Nino brings high temperature and more scarce rainfall every three to seven years, impacting weather patterns across much of Africa, the Mideast, India, southeast Asia, Australia, and the Americas, which holds half the world's population.

Interacting with other factors including wind and temperature cycles over the other oceans, El Nino can vary dramatically in power and length. At its most intense, it brings scorching heat and multi-year droughts.

In the study published in Wednesday's Nature, scientists from Princeton University and Columbia University's Earth Institute used statistics to link global weather observations and outbreaks of violence.

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The scientists correlated ENSO from 1950 to 2004 with onsets of civil conflicts that killed more than 25 people in a given year. The data included 175 countries and 234 conflicts, with over half of which each caused more than 1,000 battle-related deaths.

The findings suggest that the arrival of El Nino doubled the risk of civil conflict across 90 affected tropical countries, and may help account for a fifth of worldwide conflicts over the past half-century.

Remarkable links were found between El Nino patterns and civil unrest in Peru in 1982 and Sudan in 1963.

Further, a strong link between violence and El Nino were also found in El Salvador, the Philippines and Uganda in 1972; Angola, Haiti and Myanmar in 1991, and Congo, Eritrea, Indonesia and Rwanda in 1997.

"This is the first major evidence that the global climate is a major factor in organized violence around the world," says Solomon M. Hsiang, the study's lead author, a graduate of the Earth Institute's Ph.D. in sustainable development.

While the study does not blame specific wars on El Nino, it confirms many scientists' speculation over the strong link between climate-conflict.

Just this July, the UN Security Council discussed on climate-driven conflicts. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon noted that the possible adverse effects of climate change are "not only exacerbates threats to international peace and security; it is a threat to international peace and security".

"The most important thing is that this looks at modern times, and it's done on a global scale," said Hsiang. "We can speculate that a long-ago Egyptian dynasty was overthrown during a drought. That's a specific time and place, that may be very different from today, so people might say, 'OK, we're immune to that now.' This study shows a systematic pattern of global climate affecting conflict, and shows it right now."

"No one should take this to say that climate is our fate. Rather, this is compelling evidence that it has a measurable influence on how much people fight overall," said the co-author Mark Cane, a climate scientist at Columbia's Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory.

"It is not the only factor--you have to consider politics, economics, all kinds of other things."

According to Cane, the poorest countries respond to El Nino with violence.

The natural El Nino cycle is different from manmade global warming which continuously ramps up the temperature and extreme weather, according to the researchers. Global warming would have even greater impacts than the El Niño, and is more likely to provoke conflicts, noted Cane.

El Nino patterns can be predicted up to two years ahead, the study may give room for pre-emptive action for some conflicts and reduce humanitarian suffering.